I wonder if, nowadays in WEIRD society, given the huge chasm between high and low status people, as well as the reduced fitness consequences of being on the bottom rung, the more costly error is actually to miss an opportunity to gain status rather than to fail to avoid losing status
It might have something to do with cultural tightness / looseness. WEIRD cultures are more loose, meaning they are less punitive of low-status people or norm violators, so defensive signaling is a lower priority. You might have just convinced me to be more cynical lol.
The offensive/defensive distinction clarifies a lot. What looks like vanity is often anxiety that ends up performing vanity to not let the seams show. But once signaling becomes common knowledge, we don’t just manage trait, we manage impressions about impressions. The recursion accelerates and rooms heat up.
The instability may not come from signaling itself, but from the absence of pause. Without some way to complete a thought before reacting to how it will be judged, even defensive signals can escalate.
I agree with David Pinsof’s arguments that a huge portion of human behavior is driven by signaling, meaning the ways we try to shape how others see us.
Status seeking is what we see indeed in a society that is mainly shaped by incentives, by reward and punishment, thus by extrinsic motivation.
Yet, there is a whole world between and inside humans that has nothing to do with extrinsic motivation. The basic psychological intrinsic needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness, as described by Self-Determination Theory are connected to intrinsic motivation and especially, to well-being.
Pinsof describes a world where most behavior is defensive signaling, people trying to avoid shame, exclusion, or low status. SDT agrees that this happens, but frames it as a symptom of need frustration, not a core human motive.
SDT sees status seeking and defensive behavior as a stress response, not as the base line of human behavior.
When humans are intrinsically motivated, they are also much less judgmental. Being relatively non-judgmental is great for mental health!
It seems to me that your theory is unfalsifiable. How can someone possibly prove they engage in an action without the ulterior motive of signaling?
I've recently been reading Alasdair Macintyre's book on virtue (it's thought-provoking even if you disagree with it). He talks a lot about "shared practice" which is a coherent, socially established, and cooperative human activity that possesses its own inherent standards of excellence. Engaging in these practices—such as scientific inquiry, architecture, or the game of chess—allows individuals to realize "internal goods" that are unique to that specific activity. Crucially, MacIntyre defines virtues as the acquired character traits that enable participants to overcome challenges, achieve these internal goods, and ultimately sustain the practice over time.
So let's say that I'm engaging in shared scientific inquiry with my colleagues and I see them commit some type of error. I point out their error and attempt to correct it.
There's different *potential* levels of signaling. Am I signaling to my colleague I'm smarter than him? Am I signaling to the wider scientific community our organization engages in good research? There's lots of possibilities.
But the reason I worry about the unfalsifiable concern is what if I'm correcting the error because I have internalized the sense that "reducing errors is an internal good that helps me achieve the wider goal of practicing good science". It sure feels that way, and I don't know how you could actually run any experiment to prove it's signaling or virtue. I'm not saying unfalsifiable claims are automatically untrue, but I'm wondering how you'd respond
Another masterful essay on reputation management, following on the heels of Charisma is Bullshit. By the one-item intelligence test (the degree that your views are the same as mine), David Pinsof is a genius.
Although I cannot fault him for not citing sources that he is not familiar with or influenced by (or was simply unable to cite due to lack of time or space because you cannot cite every relevant source), I wish he would acknowledge the work of Erving Goffman's ideas on impression management in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Also (for selfish reasons) writings by my graduate school mentor, Robert Hogan (who was influenced by Goffman), and myself about personality as a form of reputation management by signaling. Hogan has argued that it is all about "getting along" (having people like you) and "getting ahead" (establishing status), and that signaling is the method by which people strive to achieve these things.
Hogan and I believe that most signaling is perfectly unconscious. Which makes good sense because self-conscious self-presentation tends to be awkward and unconvincing. I was wondering what David thought about conscious versus unconscious signaling, and glad to see that he commented on that in a footnote.
Whenever we say something like "most signaling is defensive" or "most signaling is unconscious," this raises the question of meaningful, stable individual differences (that is, personality) that coexist with the general trend. I wonder if David thinks that, in contrast to the generalization that most signaling is defensive, there are people who are consistently more offensive in their signaling than the typical individual, and how we might characterize them. Narcissistic? Histrionic?
One more thought that came to mind while reading this essay concerns the unacknowledged details about the function of informational signaling. This is not a shortcoming of the present essay, which could not possibly answer that question in a single Substack post. It seems to me that there has been an unbalanced treatment of the functions of communication by scientists who study this topic. Speech communication experts have written so much about the purpose of communication being the transfer of information from one person to another, and so little about how communications are literally attempts to control the behavior of other people. We do speak to give others information, but we don't provide information for the sole purpose of providing information. Rather, there is almost always an assumption that this information will make the other person feel a certain way, which will motivate them to behave in ways that we would like them to.
The field of linguistic pragmatics does deal with this function of communication, but pragmatics has been overshadowed by research on syntax and semantics. To its credit, the current essay suggests that the general function of signaling is to achieve status (or to avoid losing status). But the unanswered question is, what specific behaviors in the other person are we trying to encourage that will help our own status? The answer to that question is surely that there are dozens of specific behaviors that we are trying to encourage, depending on context, and that documenting them all could take a team of researchers a lifetime to achieve. I'm just saying that this could be a worthwhile endeavor.
This reads like a shift from “signaling as peacocking” to “signaling as navigation.” If most signaling is unconscious and often defensive, then it’s less about manipulation, and more about maintaining footing in a status aware environment. The system runs whether or not we narrate it, and we're all inside it.
The interesting tension you’re pointing to is between the general rule (most signaling is defensive) and individual differences: who escalates, stabilizes, or overreaches. Because there's an exchange between two humans who may both be signaling to be protective. That feels like where personality lives: not outside of signaling, but in how someone moves inside it.
That point about communication trying to shape behavior rather than just transmit information fits. Information is directional, even when we think we’re “just sharing,” we’re anticipating uptake.
On a larger scale, when people are in a defensive position in communication, it's harder for them to receive information. Additionally, in a culture that's always performing, always signaling, always protecting status and appearance, more genuine meaning and substance get dropped in the exchange.
I actually only see extremely poor mind readers. Because mind reading is entirely based in empathy which essentially is projecting your own thoughts and experiences unto others. This is not the best way to understand others. And adding a layer of pseudo intellectual bullshit on top of it (psycho-analyses) only gives the superficial impression of understanding but never actually gets tested on how reliable it is. I sincerely doubt humans are good mind readers. They may be better than other animals, but good? I doubt it.
You see the problem here, right? It's like when the Foucauldians say that all claims to knowledge are merely power grabs, or House says that "everyone lies". Well those statements fall under the claim too if they are universal (it's that pesky "all"). That many things have a signalling aspect is not in dispute, and worth saying. But you can't see through everything. If everything was transparent then you couldn't see anything at all. Some things have to be solid
This is insightful, but does it get the causality backwards? The "read the room" gestalt almost certainly precedes the atomized recursion we use to explain our "fast think" using our "slow think." Other social primates couldn't achieve the resolution we do without language, but I would think their read of body language and other forms of social pressure would otherwise be a fully intact capability.
Good point about the recursion! Certainly my obscure esoteric political philosophy and spiritual Tengrism is not a means of being too strange for either my (left wing atheist) academic and musician friends or (religious right wing) entrepreneur friends to judge me, nor is your "meta cynicism blog" done for similar reasons. Rather, it is because people like us see the bigger picture, prefer subtlety and nuance, and can engage in win-win cooperation with all of God's/Tengri's/carbon-molecular creatures!
I wonder if, nowadays in WEIRD society, given the huge chasm between high and low status people, as well as the reduced fitness consequences of being on the bottom rung, the more costly error is actually to miss an opportunity to gain status rather than to fail to avoid losing status
It might have something to do with cultural tightness / looseness. WEIRD cultures are more loose, meaning they are less punitive of low-status people or norm violators, so defensive signaling is a lower priority. You might have just convinced me to be more cynical lol.
I suppose if you’re high status, the worst thing is losing status, whereas if you’re already low status, the worst thing is failing to gain status.
These are all true inside the status race. It's just unfortunate so much weight has been put on winning status games at all.
The offensive/defensive distinction clarifies a lot. What looks like vanity is often anxiety that ends up performing vanity to not let the seams show. But once signaling becomes common knowledge, we don’t just manage trait, we manage impressions about impressions. The recursion accelerates and rooms heat up.
The instability may not come from signaling itself, but from the absence of pause. Without some way to complete a thought before reacting to how it will be judged, even defensive signals can escalate.
I agree with David Pinsof’s arguments that a huge portion of human behavior is driven by signaling, meaning the ways we try to shape how others see us.
Status seeking is what we see indeed in a society that is mainly shaped by incentives, by reward and punishment, thus by extrinsic motivation.
Yet, there is a whole world between and inside humans that has nothing to do with extrinsic motivation. The basic psychological intrinsic needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness, as described by Self-Determination Theory are connected to intrinsic motivation and especially, to well-being.
Pinsof describes a world where most behavior is defensive signaling, people trying to avoid shame, exclusion, or low status. SDT agrees that this happens, but frames it as a symptom of need frustration, not a core human motive.
SDT sees status seeking and defensive behavior as a stress response, not as the base line of human behavior.
When humans are intrinsically motivated, they are also much less judgmental. Being relatively non-judgmental is great for mental health!
It seems to me that your theory is unfalsifiable. How can someone possibly prove they engage in an action without the ulterior motive of signaling?
I've recently been reading Alasdair Macintyre's book on virtue (it's thought-provoking even if you disagree with it). He talks a lot about "shared practice" which is a coherent, socially established, and cooperative human activity that possesses its own inherent standards of excellence. Engaging in these practices—such as scientific inquiry, architecture, or the game of chess—allows individuals to realize "internal goods" that are unique to that specific activity. Crucially, MacIntyre defines virtues as the acquired character traits that enable participants to overcome challenges, achieve these internal goods, and ultimately sustain the practice over time.
So let's say that I'm engaging in shared scientific inquiry with my colleagues and I see them commit some type of error. I point out their error and attempt to correct it.
There's different *potential* levels of signaling. Am I signaling to my colleague I'm smarter than him? Am I signaling to the wider scientific community our organization engages in good research? There's lots of possibilities.
But the reason I worry about the unfalsifiable concern is what if I'm correcting the error because I have internalized the sense that "reducing errors is an internal good that helps me achieve the wider goal of practicing good science". It sure feels that way, and I don't know how you could actually run any experiment to prove it's signaling or virtue. I'm not saying unfalsifiable claims are automatically untrue, but I'm wondering how you'd respond
Another masterful essay on reputation management, following on the heels of Charisma is Bullshit. By the one-item intelligence test (the degree that your views are the same as mine), David Pinsof is a genius.
Although I cannot fault him for not citing sources that he is not familiar with or influenced by (or was simply unable to cite due to lack of time or space because you cannot cite every relevant source), I wish he would acknowledge the work of Erving Goffman's ideas on impression management in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Also (for selfish reasons) writings by my graduate school mentor, Robert Hogan (who was influenced by Goffman), and myself about personality as a form of reputation management by signaling. Hogan has argued that it is all about "getting along" (having people like you) and "getting ahead" (establishing status), and that signaling is the method by which people strive to achieve these things.
Hogan and I believe that most signaling is perfectly unconscious. Which makes good sense because self-conscious self-presentation tends to be awkward and unconvincing. I was wondering what David thought about conscious versus unconscious signaling, and glad to see that he commented on that in a footnote.
Whenever we say something like "most signaling is defensive" or "most signaling is unconscious," this raises the question of meaningful, stable individual differences (that is, personality) that coexist with the general trend. I wonder if David thinks that, in contrast to the generalization that most signaling is defensive, there are people who are consistently more offensive in their signaling than the typical individual, and how we might characterize them. Narcissistic? Histrionic?
One more thought that came to mind while reading this essay concerns the unacknowledged details about the function of informational signaling. This is not a shortcoming of the present essay, which could not possibly answer that question in a single Substack post. It seems to me that there has been an unbalanced treatment of the functions of communication by scientists who study this topic. Speech communication experts have written so much about the purpose of communication being the transfer of information from one person to another, and so little about how communications are literally attempts to control the behavior of other people. We do speak to give others information, but we don't provide information for the sole purpose of providing information. Rather, there is almost always an assumption that this information will make the other person feel a certain way, which will motivate them to behave in ways that we would like them to.
The field of linguistic pragmatics does deal with this function of communication, but pragmatics has been overshadowed by research on syntax and semantics. To its credit, the current essay suggests that the general function of signaling is to achieve status (or to avoid losing status). But the unanswered question is, what specific behaviors in the other person are we trying to encourage that will help our own status? The answer to that question is surely that there are dozens of specific behaviors that we are trying to encourage, depending on context, and that documenting them all could take a team of researchers a lifetime to achieve. I'm just saying that this could be a worthwhile endeavor.
This reads like a shift from “signaling as peacocking” to “signaling as navigation.” If most signaling is unconscious and often defensive, then it’s less about manipulation, and more about maintaining footing in a status aware environment. The system runs whether or not we narrate it, and we're all inside it.
The interesting tension you’re pointing to is between the general rule (most signaling is defensive) and individual differences: who escalates, stabilizes, or overreaches. Because there's an exchange between two humans who may both be signaling to be protective. That feels like where personality lives: not outside of signaling, but in how someone moves inside it.
That point about communication trying to shape behavior rather than just transmit information fits. Information is directional, even when we think we’re “just sharing,” we’re anticipating uptake.
On a larger scale, when people are in a defensive position in communication, it's harder for them to receive information. Additionally, in a culture that's always performing, always signaling, always protecting status and appearance, more genuine meaning and substance get dropped in the exchange.
I actually only see extremely poor mind readers. Because mind reading is entirely based in empathy which essentially is projecting your own thoughts and experiences unto others. This is not the best way to understand others. And adding a layer of pseudo intellectual bullshit on top of it (psycho-analyses) only gives the superficial impression of understanding but never actually gets tested on how reliable it is. I sincerely doubt humans are good mind readers. They may be better than other animals, but good? I doubt it.
Is this post signalling?
Yes.
You see the problem here, right? It's like when the Foucauldians say that all claims to knowledge are merely power grabs, or House says that "everyone lies". Well those statements fall under the claim too if they are universal (it's that pesky "all"). That many things have a signalling aspect is not in dispute, and worth saying. But you can't see through everything. If everything was transparent then you couldn't see anything at all. Some things have to be solid
I didn't mean the "everything" literally. I meant it in the "signaling is a way bigger deal than you thought" sense.
I disagree people are good at mind reading. Most people project and post-rationalize. There is no accuracy in this.
This is insightful, but does it get the causality backwards? The "read the room" gestalt almost certainly precedes the atomized recursion we use to explain our "fast think" using our "slow think." Other social primates couldn't achieve the resolution we do without language, but I would think their read of body language and other forms of social pressure would otherwise be a fully intact capability.
Good point about the recursion! Certainly my obscure esoteric political philosophy and spiritual Tengrism is not a means of being too strange for either my (left wing atheist) academic and musician friends or (religious right wing) entrepreneur friends to judge me, nor is your "meta cynicism blog" done for similar reasons. Rather, it is because people like us see the bigger picture, prefer subtlety and nuance, and can engage in win-win cooperation with all of God's/Tengri's/carbon-molecular creatures!
So, yeah, the goal is to get along in a group. I think I get it. Hmmm.